This grid makes me itch!

OK, that does it.  Who do I talk to about getting off the grid?

 Oh wait.  No action needed.  Now that I’ve written the phrase, “getting off the grid,” someone will contact me!  Men in Black tapping on my windows with smart phones and flashy thingies in their hands ready to scan me, diagnose my disgruntlement, prescribe and deliver just the right thing to make me feel all better.
 
Most certainly I’ll be seeing ads alongside my Facebook newsfeed touting log cabins, the joys of solitude, composting, and raising worms for pleasure and profit. 

That’s right.  Before long now we won’t have to say much of anything to prompt the newest savvy search engines hovering in “the cloud” overhead to send down a lightning bolt of customized ads catering to our every divergent thought. 

Here’s the deepest darkest news:  If Verizon has its way, your TV’s about to become a two-way mirror.  

That’s right; soon what has been a joyously stress-free passive experience, an evening transfixed in front of the flat screen complete with bad posture and dribble spots on the fronts of our shirts, will be transformed into a self-conscious job interview with Big Brother:  As we gaze in, the plasma will peer back out at us.  Sizing us up.  Playing that game.  You remember the game that used to be innocent whereby you sit in the mall and make up lives and professions for the people you see.   

Technology exists now that enables our TVs to look back at us and say, for example, “butcher,” then send you an ad for an apron with that chart showing shoulders and rump roasts and loins.  You know the one.   

Oh yes.  Verizon, jointly with Comcast, Time-Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, has applied to patent technology that will enable TVs to see directly through into people's homes in order to sell them stuff.  It’s listed under “Dangerous Ideas” on Big Think. 

Get this:  Verizon wants to create a "detection zone" around your TV.  In that zone, sensors built into the TV would catch "ambient actions" taking place in the room and use that information to display relevant advertising on the screen.   

Oh.  My.  God.  If that isn’t the creepiest idea ever to slither its way into the baskets of the snake charmers.  It makes MarkZuckerberg look like Casper the Friendly Ghost. 

FYI – under the watchful eye of your service provider your unguarded behavior is defined in the patent application as “a wide range of activities, from eating to arguing to playing with a pet.”   

If that’s not a hacker’s field day!  You know you’re going to wind up in a video set to music on YouTube, struggling with your Schnauzer over that last bit of strudel. 

The area around the Plath TV encompasses an array cat toys in various stages of mutilation and dismemberment.  It might actually be interesting to see what the commercial response would be to such a crime scene.  Would they alert authorities, or send me my own CSI amateur mystery detective crime-solving kit? 

And what might happen if two people are observed to be “snuggling together” with the TV on?  Included in the patent application is an example of how the technology would work in such a situation:  Ads could appear on screen showing a romantic getaway, a commercial for flowers, [or] a commercial for a contraceptive.  They actually said that.  Like it’s a good idea.  Something people might be glad about.  

In the same vein, Google’s trying to discover our “unmet needs for information” via GPS chips and “other sensors” built into our mobile devices.  Google Now already offers unsolicited directions, weather forecasts, flight updates, and other information when it thinks you need them.   

Contextual data can provide clues about a person and his situation, allowing Google to guess what that person wants.  “We’ve often said the perfect search engine will provide you with exactly what you need to know at exactly the right moment…without your even having to ask for it,” says Jon Wiley, electronic stalker, er, User Experience Designer for Google.  

Ha ha ha!  Thanks Jon!   

Psst!  Rather than getmyself off the grid, I want to get the grid off me!

 

Too Much Sunshine Makes a Desert

I need a neuralizer. 

I need an FDA-approved neuralizer, like the one agents “J” and “K” used in “Men in Black.”  For official use whenever a citizen had an inconvenient memory of an alien encounter, J and K broke out their flashy thingy and rewrote recent history.  A burst of light.  A pause.  An unsuspecting citizen suspended in time.  A monologue creating new “memories” to replace the problematic particulars of a sticky situation. 

Will Smith, “J,” Man-in-Black-in-training, first observed the power of the neuralizer when he saw his mentor, “K,” played by Tommy Lee Jones, freeze a woman in her funky farm house, and tell her that despite what she just saw, her husband hadn’t been transformed into a giant cockroach.  No extraterrestrial invasion occurred.  It was swamp gas.  She was going to wake up husbandless and happy. 

I could use a gadget like that.   

No, I’m not saying I want to wake up without my husband! 

I’m saying I wouldn't mind eradicating a few embarrassing episodes from the serial sit-com of my life.  You see, I’m a blurter.  Blurters mean well, but live with regrets.  Sometimes stuff just pops out and survives with the stamina of a Galapagos turtle.  We’d like to expunge that stuff from our permanent records. 

That’s why I paid particular attention to a recent breakthrough in medical technology.  Scientific American reports the development of a new drug that can erase toxic memories.  An honest-to-goodness, real life, medical miracle.  Because it creates a spotless mind, a mind unencumbered by the debilitating and ugly, they’ve dubbed it “Eternal Sunshine.”   

In a more mundane application, for the socially inept, it could be our neuralizer.  It could free us blurters from awkward circumstances of our own creation.  Oh yes.  If we can’t have an MIB neuralizer, blurters will pay for Eternal Sunshine.  

Not that I have big bouts of blurting and its concomitant remorse.  I haven’t blurted anything in quite a while.  Not since I went shopping with my good friend and her friend whom I’d only just met.  I let it slip that the belted wrap-around sweater the newly met was about to spend $100 on looked like a bathrobe.  A blurt.  It just floated in the fitting room!   

I know.  I shouldn’t have said it.  She was smiling and twirling in the three-way mirror.  She loved that thing.  I think its color was “Purina.”  

She felt good even though all she needed to complete the ambiance was red lipstick, pink spongy curlers, and a cigarette.   

You could argue I did her a favor.  I jolted her back to reality.  But it was my reality.  That’s the trouble with blurters.  We speak our own truths.  She could afford the sweater, and it made her happy.  But after my blurt, she put it back on the rack.  I ruined it for her.  

I wish I could take back that blurt.  If only I could erase that uncomfortable moment from her mind.  She’d wear that chenille shroud with pride, and all would be well with the world. 

If only I could get my hands on a few doses of Eternal Sunshine!  All my blurty wise cracks could be obliterated from the minds of the people I truly love, who no doubt shake their heads and speculate about my upbringing. 

But of course, Eternal Sunshine will never be available over-the-counter.  Even prescriptions would likely be single dose.  Blurters couldn’t be trusted with a bottle full.  We’d go around wiping out all our gaffes and helping others to positive opinions of ourselves.  We’d station sunny memories in the minds of all those whom we’ve annoyed.  Some of us might pick a pocket just to see the victim smile and say, “Thank you.” 

Blurters’ demand for Eternal Sunshine could fuel a large-scale black market.  Criminals would rub out the consciousness of their crimes from the hounds of law enforcement.  Teenagers would remove the indiscretions of their Facebook pages from their parents’ recollection.  Recreational use of the conscience cleaner could spur another sexual revolution. 

The guilt-laden would self-diagnose and self-medicate.  Moms would eradicate their own perceived parenting faux pas.  Eighth graders would no longer suffer the painful memory of being picked last for kick ball. 

You might say, “Hooray!  We’ll be so innocent and happy!”  But blurters beware.  

All things in moderation, the saying goes.  Too much sunshine makes a desert.